Grey Days: Nature’s Colours

For mornings such as this…

…when Tropical Storm Zeta in the western Caribbean Sea…

…streams rainclouds across the sky, blocking the morning sun…

…nature provides a fallback of other yellows…

…to counter the grey….

Unknown Yellow: Nature’s Colours

I had no idea what the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool is, so I did a little online search and found out that there isn’t a scientific difference. However, in common parlance a mushroom is what’s edible and a toadstool is what’s poisonous.

I see mushrooms in my garden from time to time, but I had never seen one like this before…

I did a little online search, but haven’t yet been able to identify this yellow mushroom toadstool, growing on a block of wood from the trunk of the shower of gold tree (Cassia fistula) that fell down when Hurricane Sandy hit Jamaica. That was on October 24, 2012, almost 8 years ago. The blossoms of that shower of gold tree were, as the name suggests, a very bright yellow! This little toadstool is a paler shade…

Something Distinctly Pink: Nature’s Colours

The evening sky…look up…

something distinctly pink…

Sahara Dust & The View from My Window

This was the view from my window one morning last week:

Then a plume of Sahara dust swept across the Atlantic into the Caribbean, not an uncommon event, but this was perhaps the worst in fifty years, they said.

And with the dust in the air, this was the view from my window on Wednesday morning. I could not see the hills!

 

 

That plume of Sahara dust has moved past us, here in Jamaica, though they say another will affect us in a few days time. But tonight, at sunset, I could see the hills again…against a salmon-coloured sky…

 

The Downward Glance…

Chin up! Don’t look down! The view on the ground is not the celebrated view…perhaps for good reason…

But sometimes the downward glance reveals the beauty…

…of fallen things…

…of forgotten things…

…of broken things…

…of things past their prime….

Once Upon a Sunset…

I like taking photos of sunsets. A bit cliched, you suggest? Yes, probably. But I like taking photos of sunsets anyhow.

By the time I went up onto the roof yesterday, the sun had already set and what I was left with was the after-sunset sky…

…which was rather beautiful…

I really do love taking photos of sunsets. Did I say that already?

 

Poinciana Tree!

This blooming Poinciana tree…

…Delonix regia…

…flamboyant fi true!

Day’s End & Days End

Sunset…Sunday evening…day’s end. We know that days end, that weekends end, that lives end. Sunset…Sunday evening…day’s end.

Tree in a Backyard: Minnesota

I stood in a backyard in St Paul, Minnesota, trying to take a photo of a bright red cardinal as it flitted from tree to tree. Such a beautiful bird, but it just wouldn’t sit still! Every time I moved slowly into position to snap a photo, the bird flew off to a new vantage point! So I got no photo of the bird….

This tree in the backyard, however, stayed still enough for me to take a number of photos, which I now share with you. If anyone can identify the tree for me, I would be grateful.

Here is its crown pictured with two other trees against a clear blue sky…

It had beautiful blossoms in abundance…

Here they are closer up…

The tree had such wonderfully rugged bark…

And if you look very carefully, up towards the right in this photo, you may see the branch on which the cardinal was sitting moments before I captured this image!

Pineapple Patch

We have a pineapple patch in our backyard.

We will probably get a dozen pineapples this year, which is fewer than last year. Perhaps because of the drought…

This was the first pineapple of the season. “Was” because we ate it the day after it was picked. How sweet it was!